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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 1940 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

seeing - in fact, the quite significant improvement in some areas in the ACT economic situation - the ACT Government must maintain the sort of impetus and the sort of direction that we have established over the last two years. We believe it is the right way to go.

The other thing that Mr Moore has overlooked is that, as well as the unfunded superannuation problem, there is something like $110m worth of depreciation in that operating loss figure. I think that is something that Mr Moore needs to take into account, as do those opposite. It is only since we moved to full accrual accounting that things such as unfunded superannuation and depreciation have even been on the table. When you actually look at the situation, we are addressing a number of the areas of cost in our budget - the areas that are costing us more than national averages or that we believe we can reduce our costs in. We will continue to do that, but we will not do that at the expense of the very real improvements that we are seeing at this moment in the ACT economy.

Mr Speaker, it is interesting to note that in the Auditor-General's report - and I will quote from page 14 - he says:

It is acknowledged that with the current economic difficulties which both the ACT Government and the ACT business community are encountering the present time may not be appropriate for revenues and costs to be balanced.

We agree with the Auditor-General; we do not believe this is the appropriate time for that to be done. But we do believe that it is the appropriate time to address things such as workers compensation premiums, accommodation strategy and our approach to information technology. InTACT will lead to some $3m savings per annum. Moving to a smaller senior management will lead to a $1m per annum reduction. A more sensible approach to works and commercial services, to make them more competitive out there in the marketplace generally, is another saving. There are many other, I think, very sensible approaches to cost reduction. But they are not at the expense of the small improvements that we are starting to see in the ACT economy at the moment. Of course, there are the very large improvements we are seeing in the employment area. We believe that the approach we have taken in this budget is appropriate, and I am confident that the Assembly will see it that way as well.

Proposed expenditure agreed to.

Part 3 - Chief Minister's Department

Proposed expenditure - Chief Minister's Department, $50,922,600 (comprising net cost of outputs, $28,952,600; and payments on behalf of Territory, $21,970,000)

MR WHITECROSS (Leader of the Opposition) (11.53): Mr Speaker, I will try not to repeat comments I made earlier on the Estimates Committee response, but there are a couple of issues in relation to the Chief Minister's Department that I want to address specifically. I have to return briefly to the question of how the Government goes about funding its deficits. We have seen lease-back arrangements last year and the forced

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